Roll Your Eyes, But Eminem’s Trump-Skewering Freestyle Mattered

Last night, during the 2017 BET Hip-Hop Awards, Eminemdelivered a missive aimed squarely at the White House. Over four minutes, he freestyled a furious a cappella verse ethering the 45th president of the United States, from his ignorance of history to the likelihood he’ll start a nuclear holocaust. Eminem exposed Trump’s hypocrisy, and his use of military veterans as a shield for his own shittiness. It was, essentially, a liberal’s Twitter feed in freestyle form, coming from a guy better known for rape raps than political rhetoric.

Though Eminem is way past his peak of cultural relevance, this freestyle feels significant for several reasons. The first: He appears to actually be freestyling. The art of “freestyle” isn’t quite dead, but it’s definitely on life support. As hip-hop has evolved into pop music, lyrical proficiency has become less important to commercial success, and fewer and fewer MCs are willing to take the risk of publicly testing their improvisational rhyming chops. The ability to compose raps on the fly has long been considered one of the true tests of an MC’s skill, but of late, “freestyle” has become shorthand for any verse performed live that’s not already associated with a released song. This is not how Marshall Mathers gets down.

Em’s freestyle fluency has been well-documented (and lionized by Hollywood), and he clearly recognizes the power of the form’s immediacy. He has nothing left to prove in terms of lyrical skill (written or freestyled), and while these certainly aren’t his most biting or clever lines, there still are occasional flashes of brilliance:

From his endorsement of BannonSupport for the KlansmenTiki torches in hand for the soldier that's blackAnd comes home from IraqAnd is still told to go back to AfricaFork and a dagger in this racist 94-year-old grandpaWho keeps ignoring our past historical, deplorable factorsNow if you're a black athlete, you're a spoiled little brat forTryin’a use your platform or your statureTo try to give those a voice who don't have oneHe says, “You're spittin' in the face of vets who fought for us, you bastards!”

The winner of a freestyle battle typically shames their opponent into submission, which would appear to be a losing battle against our shameless commander-in-chief. But more than anything, the near-complete dismantling that Em dishes out in this verse serves to highlight just how many things about the president are worth mocking. With his spray tan, combover, and limited grasp of literacy, Drumpf is such an easy target that a written diss record almost seems unfair. Em needed to play with a handicap.

What matters more than the format, though, is the platform Eminem has simply by being, well, Eminem. If Macklemore is the one rapper that suburban moms allow their kids to listen to because he’s wholesome, then Em was the one they disavowed—but their kids still listened to behind their backs. Just as black and brown kids are desperate to see people that look and sound like them on stage, on record, and on screen, white kids clung to Eminem as evidence that their obsession (and often, fetish) with hip-hop was valid. And now? Those kids are voting, paying taxes, and likely watching the NFL. Having already infiltrated those white spaces, Eminem is sneaking in the back door to deliver a message that people of color have been shouting from the rooftops for years: American racism and oppression starts at the very top.

Of course, his lyrics have shared traits with the president’s treatment of women, from garden-variety misogyny to more aggressive boasts of assault. Considering his own problematic lyrical history, Em avoids the subject, even appearing to stop himself from laying into the First Lady: “And say a prayer that every time Melania talks/She gets her mou—ahh, I'ma stop.” Completely avoiding Trump’s behavior towards women makes the screed somewhat incomplete, but that aspect is also not really Em’s to tell. His own hypocrisy on the matter would likely overshadow any message he’d offer. Instead, Eminem seems laser-focused on the area where he can make the biggest impact: his own white Trump-apologist fans.

How many people in America get more upset by being called racist than by actual racism? How many of them love Eminem? By virtue of his race and stature, Eminem likely has more potential reach with Trumpsters than any other rapper alive. As he turns the mirror on them, some of his white fans are sure to be taken aback by the reflection, like the redneck voice he uses to mockingly rap, “He's gonna get rid of all immigrants/He's gonna build that thang up taller than this.” In the video, he’s looking directly into the camera—and into their eyes—as he raps, “If you can't decide who you like more and you're split/On who you should stand beside, I'll do it for you with this: Fuck you.” This is Eminem wielding his privilege as a weapon, taking on the president in the culture war he’s currently waging against the progressive majority.

Even if Eminem’s past streak of commercial blockbusters have left him financially set, he still risks alienating a portion of his fanbase. His freestyle is remarkable in that it’s relatively unique among music’s white superstars. Fewer than you’d think have spoken out so publicly against the horrors of this administration, let alone called out their Trump-supporting fans on record. At the very least, Eminem should make a few of his Trump-voting listeners consider their choices, as liberal America has been trying to do since the election. If we’re lucky, he’ll inspire other successful mainstream musicians to consider confronting their fans over what they believe. Either way, it was worth the effort.